Today is Cate’s 10-month birthday. Time for some baby milestones!

1. She said her first word. Only it’s not really a word, and I have no idea if this counts. Every time she sees one of the cats, she gets all excited and she says, “Beh-baaah!!” It’s like she’s calling them a baby, which doesn’t really make any sense, since I always say “kitty-cat” when I point out the cats. But she’s consistent in calling them “beh-baaah” every time she sees them, so I think that’s her first official word. She’s not very good at K and T sounds, I’ve only heard her say them a few times sporadically, so I think she just made up a multi-syllable name for them that she can easily say.

She can also say “uh-oh,” and has used it appropriately a few times (i.e., after throwing her sippy cup off her high chair), but I’m not sure that she really knows what it means.

2. She understands a few words. She’s definitely got “no,” “stop,” and “uh-uh,” although usually she just laughs and keeps on doing whatever it was I just told her to stop doing. Most of the time it just gives me an extra two seconds to catch up with her and remove her from whatever situation she’s gotten herself into. Also, sometimes if she’s freaking out because I walked into the next room, I’ll say “come here” and she seems to know that means to follow me. We’re still working on some of the other basic words and signs – milk, eat, more, water. She seems to understand them, but so far she doesn’t have any interest in signing back.

3. Her singing and dancing never ceases to crack us up. I don’t have a good video yet of her doing her Ray Charles rock-back-and-forth dance, but I’m working on it. (She gets distracted every time she sees me with the video camera.) She does it pretty much anytime she hears music that she likes. And now that she can clap her hands, she has a whole new way to express her happiness with music.

4. Her new favorite game is to sit in the hall, I sit a couple of feet in front of her, and I roll a ball to her so that it stops in the V of her legs. She laughs and laughs, and flails her arms so excitedly that she ends up knocking the ball back to me. It’s a riot.

5. She is so active. We’ve been joking that she’s like one of those perpetual motion desk toys – if she’s awake, she’s on the move. Last night she got fussy around 5 in the morning, so I brought her into bed with us and got her back to sleep. She woke up at 8, pulled herself up to a stand on our headboard, and started jumping up and down. She’s not exactly the most subtle alarm clock, she was just! so! happy! because! morning! Yippee!

6. Probably because she’s so active, and also because she’s gotten so tall, I’ve noticed that her little fat rolls are starting to disappear. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I’m glad because I don’t want her to be an overweight kid. I know what that’s like, and it’s no fun. Of course I’ll love her and think she’s beautiful no matter what, but I know firsthand how cruel kids can be, and I would feel so guilty if I passed that on to her. The last thing I want is for her to inherit my “fat gene.” On the other hand, I love her little fat rolls, and it makes me a little sad that she’s turning into a (gasp!) toddler, and she’s not staying a teeny-tiny widdle baybee.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally excited to see her turn into her own little person, and I can’t wait until she can really talk and we can have conversations with each other. I often wonder what kind of personality she’s going to have, what kind of things she’ll like, what kind of hobbies she’ll take up (my guess is dancing or gymnastics), and I really can’t wait for all of that stuff. My excitedness about the stuff that’s coming far outweighs the sadness that I feel for the babyhood that’s leaving. I just have to remember to keep kissing all of her little fat rolls as long as they’re still around.